Ralph Fiennes Eyed for Warner Bros.’ ‘The Goldfinch’ Adaptation

Warner Bros. and Amazon have locked down a deal to co-finance a feature adaptation of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, that book your mom’s book club and your more literary friends probably read last year. The book earned rave reviews from all sides so a movie deal was not far off, and this week brings news that Ralph Fiennes might star in it.

The Goldfinch is the story of Theo Decker, a boy who survives a terrorist bomb explosion that kills his mother and embarks on a Dickensian journey through various foster families and organizations that sees him, at one point, end up working in the art forgery business. Variety reports that Warners and Amazon are eyeing Fiennes for the part of Hobie, an antiques dealer who befriends Theo.

If you haven’t read it yet, here’s the book’s synopsis:

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don’t know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love–and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

Amazon’s deal means it’ll get streaming rights to the movie after Warners distributes it in theaters. A few years ago, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy scribe Peter Straughan was hired to adapt this screenplay, and then Brooklyn’s director John Crowley was set to direct, but there’s no telling of those plans are still in place after all this time.